Greetings from Indianapolis, Indiana
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Circle City Raceway Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,705 THE EVENT Editor’s note: Does something that you were expecting to be great sometimes turn out to be less than great in some ways? Yes, it does. That’s life. This could come from misaligned expectations or whatever you were seeing just wasn’t that great all along! I travel this way so you don’t have to. How does that work? I tell you how I travel and then you get to decide if that’s a good idea for you. Fair enough? Now get out there and go somewhere. Covid is in the rearview mirror and getting smaller every day. I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with Juan Carlos Ramirez on one of my many Mexican trackchasing adventures). I live in San Clemente, California. I am a “trackchaser”. I trackchase. Have you ever in your life heard of “trackchasing”? I didn’t think so. Trackchasing for me is all about three things. First, I enjoy auto racing. Secondly, my hobby requires a good deal of overnight travel. When I venture out to see a race at a track I’ve never seen before I do not want my trip limited to racing only. The very last thing I want when I’m done trackchasing is to have memories of only racing. I want to take some time to see the local attractions of wherever I might be visiting. Those visits in many cases will provide more long-lasting memories than whatever I saw on the track. Finally, I want to create a logistical plan that allows me to accomplish the two points mentioned above without depleting my retirement account. That’s trackchasing for me. I’ve been able to see the world doing this. If you’re interested in exactly what I’ve been able to experience all around the U.S. and the world I recommend you click on this link. Trackchasing Tourist Attractions After each and every event that I attend I post a YouTube video, a SmugMug photo album and a very detailed Trackchaser Report about the experience on my website at www.randylewis.org. My trackchasing contributions generate a good deal of interest in what I am doing. My YouTube channel (ranlay) has more than 1.3 million views. My website gets more than 20,000 views every month. Because I have seen racing in 85 countries at this point I am considered the World’s #1 Trackchaser. That’s good enough for me. Now I encourage you to drop down a few spaces and read about today’s trackchasing adventure. As you discover what went on at this track just think about the idea that I’ve done this more than 2,700 times. I don’t mind admitting I am addicted to the hobby of trackchasing. It’s just fun! If you’re interested in looking back and seeing where I’ve been the following link is for you. If you’ve got a question, comment or whatever please leave it at the bottom of this report. It’s very easy to do. Or you can visit me on Facebook. Thanks! FOREWORD Tuesday/Wednesday, June 8/9, 2021. TUESDAY Rain doesn’t work well with me. My trip up to now had been majorly affected by the weather. Weather and dirt track racing of any kind normally doesn’t work very well together. I fully expect the weather to cancel one or two of my remaining race dates. Nevertheless, I would have to just wait it out and see what happened. Good morning! This morning I was awakened at 6 a.m. by the hotel fire alarm. I’ve had that happen a few times. I am almost always staying in a Marriott or a Sheraton property. As I look back on it almost all of my fire alarms have happened when I was staying at a Holiday Inn. Why would that be? Luckily all of the hotel fire alarms I have ever experienced have been false alarms. That was the case today as well. I am thankful for that. I had originally planned to fly from Los Angeles to Indianapolis tonight. However, when the College World Series (above) in Omaha became an option, I decided it wouldn’t make much sense to fly back home from St. Louis on Monday (yesterday) and in less than 36 hours turn around and fly back to Indianapolis from LAX for a race on Wednesday night. I had purchased a one-way ticket from Los Angeles to Indianapolis. The fare was so cheap that I didn’t mind eating the cost. I would simply stay out in the Midwest for 12 days rather than breaking the trip up into two roughly six-day parts. I didn’t have anything major planned for today. There were two or three minor league baseball teams that could’ve been in my transportation path but wouldn’t you know it… they were all playing away games. I was also looking at stopping in my family’s hometown of Oakland, Illinois. I figured I would take a tour of the town which has a population of just 1,000 people. I would stop by the park which was the site of so many of my Memorial Day aka Decoration Day weekends as a youngster. Then I would go over to the cemetery and look for “Gilkerson” gravesites. After giving a little more thought I decided that I would make the trip to Oakland in a couple of days on the way back from Ohio when I was heading to Missouri. Today I would make the five-hour, 358-mile one-way drive over to Florence, Kentucky. Y’alls vs. the Otters? Tonight, I was looking to attending a minor league baseball game in Florence to see the Florence Y’alls play the Evansville Otters. That put the city of Florence, Kentucky on my radar screen. Since I needed to be over in that part of the world for tomorrow night’s racing, I figured I would make the long drive to Florence, Kentucky to see the ball game and also be well-positioned for Thursday night’s racing in Rossburg, Ohio. I didn’t have a ticket to the game. But I had my sign. It is true I didn’t have a ticket but it is also true I would not need my sign. At the aptly named Y’alls Ballpark, the Florence Y’alls call home Tuesday games “2-dollar Tuesdays”. I figured I could afford to buy a ticket for two dollars. It was going to be a very rainy and humid late springtime afternoon in Kentucky. KFC rocks. Along the drive, I downloaded the KFC restaurant smartphone app on my phone. After extensive research, I have determined, that according to my personal taste, KFC offers the best crispy chicken sandwich. I have come to find out that KFC does not have nearly as many restaurant locations as the hamburger joints do. Traveling on interstates makes it hard to find a KFC opportunity. So far, I wouldn’t rate the KFC app that highly. However, I am not giving up. I’m having a KFC sandwich for lunch even if I don’t have it until dinner. $2 Tuesdays! Yes, it just happened that I was showing up on two-dollar Tuesday night. That meant that all tickets were two dollars and select refreshment items were two bucks each as well. With all tickets being the same price, I selected a seat ($16 face value) in the VIP section which was directly behind home plate about a dozen rows up. This would be a perfect place to watch a game. Then I went to the concession stand. I ordered a 20-ounce domestic draft beer when I noticed the electronic sign read two dollars. When I went to check out, they wanted to charge me $7.50 for the beer. At that point, the servers discovered their electronic price sign was incorrect but gave me the beer for two bucks anyway. I added a hotdog for another two dollars and I was set for the evening. It was a warm but extremely humid evening at the ballpark. I hadn’t walked much today so for the first few innings, I simply walked from the right field area behind the seats past home plate to the left-field area. By the time I left the ballpark, I had covered my 4 miles. Yes, I am a multitasker. Rain was in the area but it didn’t really rain at the game. A small crowd of maybe 300-400 fans was in attendance. Minor league games do not draw big crowds. I’ve seen quite a bit of baseball at the minor-league level. The quality difference is dramatic compared to the majors. I guess that’s why they call this the minor leagues. The announcer had a couple of interesting calls that he went to frequently. Every time an airplane flew over from the nearby Cincinnati airport, he said this was another flyover sponsored by XXX. When one of the opposing Evansville Otters struck out, he would say another Otter had been flushed down the toilet sponsored by XXX. They do and say a lot of unusual things at minor-league baseball games! When it began to rain in the bottom of the ninth inning with the Florence Y’alls behind 11-7 and two outs I headed for the exits. This trip has already had a lot of unusual generally negative things happen. More were about to come. If it ain’t one thing; it’s something else. During my drive up to northern Cincinnati, right downtown, I was in the middle lane of the three lanes going in my direction. I was traveling at about 65 miles an hour. Just to my left in the fast lane about 50 yards in front of me three cars got into a major crash. They were debris spilling over into my lane. There was no way I could stop. I drove through the debris and almost immediately thought I had another flat tire as I did in St. Louis last weekend. Luckily, I got through this accident without any major issues. The three cars that crashed into each other all looked like their occupants would be safe but I’m sure at least one of the cars was totaled. I didn’t really see exactly what caused the wreck. It was already in progress when I was passing by. I was supposed to be flying on Delta Airlines from Los Angeles to Indianapolis tonight. However, when Carol’s trip got extended because of rain with the College World Series I elected not to fly back to Los Angeles with her on Monday and then almost immediately fly back to Indianapolis. I was just going to eat the ticket because I hadn’t paid much for it. Yes! Tonight, I received an email saying that Delta had canceled the flight on their own. I’m sure glad that I didn’t go back to California for a flight that ended up being canceled! Now I would use their cancellation to my advantage I hoped. I responded to their cancellation notice by saying that I wanted to have my flight expense refunded. If that happens. I will actually be lucky because I will be getting back money on a flight I wasn’t going to take anyway! Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. WEDNESDAY I move around. Each year I will trackchase in 25-35 American states. I’ve been doing that for more than 20 years. I don’t believe there’s been a single trackchaser this century who, even in a single year, has trackchased in more states than I have. Always meeting up with old friends. One of the advantages of doing that is I get a chance to see friends who live far from where I live in Southern California. Today I was meeting up with my good buddy Greg Robbins. Greg and I worked together for a few years at Procter & Gamble before I retired in 2002. He lives in the greater Cincinnati area. Skyline Chili also rocks. Despite the fact that we live nearly 2,000 miles apart I probably get a chance to have lunch with Greg one or two times a year. I’ve been doing that for a long time. Today we chose a Skyline Chili location for lunch. I’m a big fan of Skyline Chili for decades. If we had those near where I live, I would eat there all the time. Greg and I took the time at lunch to talk about the world of finance, the world of politics and the world of people in general. Generally, he and I are in agreement on these topics. We probably don’t think about this stuff like you might imagine that we do. By the way, today Greg’s wife Donna popped in to say hello. Always great seeing her! Following lunch, I headed over to the Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis, Indiana. This is a brand-new track or at least it’s a brand-new track in its current configuration. A new track doesn’t stay on my radar, without being seen, for long. The track is located at the Marion County Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. I know that they raced go-karts here during their fair in years past. I tried to get there a time or two but was always hampered by rainy summer weather. I’m thinking, and I’m not 100% sure on this, that the smaller go-kart track at the Marion County Fairgrounds was located in the same spot that the Circle City Raceway now occupies. I’m going to assume that the kart track was smaller than the current ¼-mile version at Circle city. Re-built in 2020. The track website told me that only the main straight grandstand and light poles were kept from the old track. They began construction of the new track in October 2020. Meeting a new/old friend tonight. I was looking forward to the show for two reasons. First, I was going to get a chance to meet up again with my good buddy Greg Stuart. Greg lives in northern Indiana. He and I attended a racing event at the MEC Coliseum (above) in Shipshewana, Indiana in October 2020. I haven’t had time to post that report yet but it was a unique affair. That race (9 hours!) gave Greg and me plenty of time to get to know each other. USAC National Midgets. The second reason why I was looking forward to the racing tonight was that the USAC national midgets were racing. There are lots of classes of race cars in the United States and lots of different racing organizations. I would say the USAC national midgets are in my top five for the type of racing I would like to see on a regular basis. A first since Covid began. Greg was waiting for me near the grandstands when I arrived. Indianapolis can get hot in the summer and it was hot tonight. I grabbed a hand-breaded tenderloin for just five bucks and smothered it with mustard. This was the first time I had seen a freestanding mustard dispenser rather than those pesky little mustard packets since Covid began. Ramo! The United States Auto Club (USAC) has been in the racing business for a long time. They primarily promote sprint car and midget racing. My first ever exposure to “big time” racing was with the USAC stock car races held up in Milwaukee on the famous Milwaukee mile. When I was in high school and college, we made the long drive up there from East Peoria, Illinois for several of their shows. Those races still bring back fond memories of big-time auto racing with drivers like Ramo Stott (above), A.J. Foyt, Jack Bowsher, Don White, Butch Hartman and Dick Trickle. USAC open-wheel racing draws a distinct race fan demographic. More fans than usual are older, white men. These folks are very knowledgeable racing fans. You won’t see very many women, relative to their stats in the general population, and you will not see virtually any people of color. People of color don’t really come to short-track auto racing. They never have. Will they in the future? Probably not. Fellow competitors. Greg and I grabbed a seat high up in one of the center sections of the grandstand. We put down our seat cushions for the night’s racing action. Who did we find sitting right next to our seat cushions? Brian and Sue Dolphy (above) from southern Illinois! They enjoy the trackchasing hobby as well. I’m going to ask that you take a look at my YouTube video of tonight’s racing. If you like side-by-side racing. If you like racing where there’s lots of passing and maybe a tumble or two from time to time, you’re going to like the USAC midget racing at the Circle City Raceway. Tonight’s one BIG problem. I had just one problem with tonight’s entertainment. This was a big problem from my point of view. As I mentioned I don’t really know what the old racetrack looked like or what its actual layout was like. If I were going to build a new race track and were going to have some of the major sanctioning bodies racing at my track, like the World of Outlaws or USAC, I would have done one thing majorly differently than what the people who actually constructed Circle City actually did. What would that be? I would not have had the grandstands facing into a setting sun!! Maybe I shouldn’t be critical of the track construction. Maybe they built the track at night when there was no sun. Maybe, but probably not. Think “I am staring into a ball of fire. I am staring into a ball of fire for three hours”. The weather in Indianapolis, Indiana during the summertime can be hot, blazing hot. Did the people who constructed the grandstand think that the fans would really appreciate staring into a hot sun when they arrived at the track at say 6 p.m. until the sun finally went down three hours later? Did they really think that? Crowds are generally down at all kinds of sporting events and that’s not just due to Covid. Crowds were trending downward before Covid ever happened. There are avid racing fans who will go to a race no matter what the conditions. I guess I’m one of those people because I will stand out on a frozen lake with wind chill temperatures well below zero just to watch racing. However, most people are not avid racing fans or avid baseball fans or avid basketball fans. They are just going out for an evening of entertainment. After a long day of work, I just wanna be comfortable. When folks are being entertained, they want to be comfortable. I don’t think you’ll find a movie theater in the United States that doesn’t have air-conditioning. I’m pretty sure you won’t find very many movie theaters that start their programs later than advertised. Auto racing more often than not doesn’t start on time. If you go to a NASCAR race, they will start on time but short tracks, nope. The dirt track racing fan is going to be dusted down when watching dirt tracks. If you were an avid racing fan you might say, “What’s the problem? This is dirt track racing. You’re going to get dirty”. However, the casual fan who just came out for a night of entertainment doesn’t want to get dirty. They don’t want to see the show start late. They want clean bathrooms. Did I forget to mention they do not want to stare into a blazing ball of fire, some people call the sun, for three hours? Just twist it some! If you know the people who promote the Circle City Raceway or you know the people who built the Circle City Raceway, I would ask that you pass along my message to them. They’ve got a few choices. They could start the races after dark. They could put up a huge tarp that blocks out the sun from glaring into the grandstands. Or they could twist the grandstand in whatever way was necessary so that people didn’t get heat stroke from the sun during heat races! I know what the promoter might be saying. “Do you have any idea how much it would cost to “twist” things?” I would ask this to the promoter. “Do you know how much money you are losing at each show, each year, every year by NOT twisting thins?” This is one of the big problems with short track racing. It truly does cost money to “twist” whatever. The short track operator doesn’t always have that money. Then they lose more money because they couldn’t afford to twist things. Sooner or later many tracks will go out of business because they didn’t twist things. This is sort of a circular reference going in the wrong direction. Greg…looking forward to our next visit. Anyway, I enjoyed my night sitting next to Greg Stuart and talking about the races. I really enjoyed the actual racing, much more so after the sun went down. Will I be back? Do I plan to ever come back to the Circle City Raceway? Honestly, I don’t think I do. Maybe if they were having an early November race when the temperature was going to be 50° and the sun would not be a factor I might. It’s a shame. They’ve got a great track in the middle of the country and they have some really good racing groups come there. For me, I will never sit in the grandstand and face the sun at Circle City again for three hours…ever. When Greg and I said our goodbyes for the evening I headed over toward the famous Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. I’ll be seeing their late model “Dream” race there tomorrow night. I’m very much looking forward to my first visit to Eldora in a few years. I’ll tell you all about it soon. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,705 tracks. Indiana The Hoosier State This evening I saw racing at my 128th-lifetime track in the Hoosier, yes, the Hoosier State. I hold the #2 trackchasing ranking in Indiana. I am closing rapidly on the state leader. Indiana ranks #3 (behind California and Michigan), amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Indiana state trackchasing list. I have made 82 separate trips to Indiana seeing these tracks. Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis World’s #1 Trackchaser Peoria Old Timers Racing Club (P.O.R.C.) Hall of Fame Member Indiana sayings: “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.” Timeless as it is, the Indianapolis 500 also reflects the times. When Janet Guthrie became the first woman to start the race in 1977, longtime speedway owner Tony Hulman revised his ritual pre-race PA directive to the field of 33. After some debate, he settled on, “In company with the first lady to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, gentlemen, start your engines.” Which has a kind of convoluted Victorian elegance, but not the more succinctly satisfying ring of the version into which the phrase has evolved. JUST THE FACTS LIFETIME TRACKCHASER COMPARISONS The three most important trackchasing comparisons to me are: Total lifetime tracks seen Total “trackchasing countries” seen Lifetime National Geographic Diversity results Total Lifetime Tracks There are no trackchasers currently within 840 tracks of my lifetime total. That’s a fact, Jack. Total Trackchasing Countries My nearest trackchasing competitor, a native of Belgium, has seen racing in more than 30 fewer countries compared to my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below to see the video production from the racing action today. See it in pictures! Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. You can view the album slide by slide or click on the “slide show” icon for a self-guided tour of today’s trackchasing adventure. Minor league baseball, short track auto racing and meeting up with friends! 
